Colorado Can Handle Business On The Road Against UCLA

Colorado vs. UCLA, 9:00 ET

College hoops was a bit of a dud yesterday, but not terrible. I went 1-1 in my plays, which is acceptable, but not what I'm looking to accomplish. The game I lost was on South Carolina, one of the top-ranked teams in the country. They played Auburn and were absolutely destroyed. I was confused about why the spread was double-digits, but even the 11.5 wasn't enough points to take with South Carolina as they didn't show up. Luckily, our win on Tennessee was no sweat and if you sprinkled the under on the Arkansas team total, you won there as well. Tonight, I'm hopeful we can make another play that is no sweat as we put a play on Colorado and UCLA. 

Colorado comes into the game with a 16-8 record and the vast majority of their losses have come within their conference. Their season has seen a lot of clusters of winning and then losses. They opened the season with four wins before dropping a game against Florida State on a neutral floor. They won a game against Iona before dropping a game at Colorado State. It was a respectable loss as they only feel by five points. After stringing together six wins, they dropped games against Arizona, Arizona State, and California. All of those games were on the road. They ran off four wins and then dropped three of their past four games. They fell to Washington State and Utah on the road and Arizona in the most recent game. They've been very competitive in six of their eight losses this year. The only two losses where they weren't good were against Arizona. They've lost those two games by a combined 67 points. All six of the other losses were by a combined 32 points. They have exactly one road win this season as well which doesn't really bode well tonight as they travel to UCLA to take on the Bruins. Their one win was against Washington, a fairly average squad. Colorado has five guys averaging ten or more points per game and are a tough team to defend both inside and outside. 

UCLA is having a tough season and sit at 13-11 for the year. They've done a great job lately as they've won the past five games, and three of them came on the road. I'm not sure that this is going to keep up, but maybe they've figured something out that will propel them toward a spot in the tournament. If the season ended today, I don't think they would have a spot in the big dance, but there is still time. Not only have they won their past five games, they've gone 7-1 over the past eight games and the only loss came against Arizona in Arizona, a game they lost by just six points. Prior to this stretch, UCLA was terrible. They lost eight of nine games. Most of the losses were at least competitive, so maybe they have just figured out a way to close games. Right now the Bruins have four players scoring in double figures. The rest of their team doesn't have a single player that averages more than five points per game. The biggest issue is that UCLA doesn't really have any shooters. There are only two guys on the roster that are shooting above 35% from deep. The team collectively only shoots 41.7% from the floor, and 72% from the free throw line. Offensively, the team is just not very efficient. They only average 11.5 assists per game and that is all negated because they also average the same amount of turnovers. 

I think we have a correlated play here. If UCLA wins this game, the total should go under 136. If Colorado wins the game the total should go over. UCLA has to play at a slow pace and rely on some defense to keep them in and have a chance, so they can get their offense to at least have a chance in the game. I'm going to take Colorado in this one. They are the better team, even if they aren't playing better lately. I'll take them on the moneyline at -120 rather than to cover the -1.5 spread. 

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